Agreed. If you have any 8 charizards he would trade you for his 8.5 charizards lol he doesn't like those half grades and sub grades when you can keep it simple and dated... But as you can see someone displaying all PSA cards that he's ever invested into he doesn't have much incentive to support other slab companies are different than everything he's owned to date
@@Hunter-nh3yy No they didn't. Wizards of the Coast was licensed to print the English cards in 1999 and lost the license in 2003. They're an American company. The Japanese vintage cards started in 1996 by Media Factory; three years before WOTC started printing any Pokemon cards.
Now is such a great time to buy. Recently bought a Shining Celebi that was graded a 7 by a non-PSA grading company and it cost the same as a raw copy would have in much worse condition. The 7 and the non-PSA brand made it cheap but the card still looked NM and infinitely better than raws on the market for a similar price. I only collect raw binder sets in NM so I cracked the slab to get at the card and couldn't believe that this 7 was so much nicer than what people wanted for ungraded. Great times.
Lol I sent to psa kept every 10 and sold the rest. I miss the days of selling a psa 2 base unlimited holo chansey for 65 or 70 lol but all good things end
Many of the mainstream Poketubers are complicit in this. You have them overstating the values of cards in their streams and thumbnails which made many casual viewers during the pandemic think they could cash in on this money grab.
The thing is though, some cards are still so tough to get/grade from WOTC. I really feel like e-series, Neo series (Shinings), Shadowless (1st Ed) will continue to be fantastic investments that will only go up. Anything that hits a PSA 10 will always have rarity and the hobby is growing. 10 years from now those cards that have only 100 PSA 10's in existance will have thousands of collectors that desperately need them. Now is the time to hold.
It is growing, but it's not growing fast. There is a limit to how many people can be "collectors" of pokemon who specifically want to purchase cards graded as opposed to just keeping them raw or in a binder, on top of that for wotc to rise above 2020 peak, you'll need people with big wallets to come in, average joes aren't gonna increase the price of 1st ed PSA 10 base zard
@@TachibanaTengoku That'swhy there was a boom. People with fat wallets could afford to speculate on and buy at higher prices on nostalgia for these 20year old cards. it caused a reaction from average joes but your average joe can't afford to buy $2,000 PSA 10 cards every week. Cards became way more valuable over night than they ever have which is questionable to say the least. What set it all off was after Logan Paul, all these people came in like a flood from a perfect storm. The market for Pokemon cards has never had such a massive increase in the value of cards like it did in 2020. So much so that they've printed 25% of all cards that have ever existed in the past 2 years to keep up with demand of these new sets which carried over from WOTC collectors and nostalgia collectors to modern. PSA shut down because of how large a volume of cards had been sent in from sports and Pokemon.
"Do I need to tilt my head a bit to see the stonks?" 2 minutes in and I'm already laughing. On a serious note I sold like 5 graded cards, and a handful of other cards just before Logan Paul 2020 boom and i never bought anything after that cause I was so sick of the community, prices, and scalpers at my local stores. I've been thinking about getting back into buying cards I loved and want graded and now things seem more relaxed and stable.
Buying for the sake of hobby enjoyment should be number one, but if future gain is a factor for you, always go with scarcity, and theres so much WOTC product that doesn’t fall under that. I too have really gained an eye for some of these niche less populated Japanese promos, there is just something about them that I like! Must be why some of my favorite WOTC are the black star promos.
Such an interesting topic! You've earned another sub. I guess the only benefit from these pop up grading companies is that you can buy cards for less than raw value, something I have done with my Japanese collection!
Wow, I just had PTSD flashbacks to the great AD War of RU-vid years ago when he said "Knowledge is power" with that dude that had the book shelves next to his Lambo in every single ad ever. Great video as always man!
The hype beasts have been saying since I got back into Pokemon that these boxes are so rare and every day another gets opened there is one less on the market. Here we are today. Sealed product keeps popping up. More being opened and sold on whatnot and opened on youtube than before, and there doesn't seem to be an end to that supply. Interesting how wrong the hype beasts have been for the past 6 years that I know of. I am sure it's been a thing even longer.
Well I mean they were right about everything they said, but the market got over-enthusiastic about Pokemon cards, used vehicles and homes. The Pokemon bubble has burst and used vehicles and homes are next undoubtedly. The anticipation for inflation led to an enormous bubble in every asset class. That being said - sealed Pokemon product is still up an unbelievable amount since April 2020 (MUCH higher than the rate of inflation), which is when the government started printing trillions of dollars to effectively hand out. It's not a great time to buy to resell in the short-term now, sure but that was bound to happen eventually since it was a PHENOMENAL buying opportunity for a year straight. People literally made 20-30x their money in 12 months on certain items lol. If base set booster boxes drop below $12k I'll be picking one up. Eventually, they really WILL be as rare people expect them to be.
I (nearly) have a full set of Base Set at a PSA 9 grade. These mostly came from my 30 year old son's childhood collection. Keeping them for him incase of a rainy day...advice please...is this a good idea or bad ???
Bottom line is, don't buy unlimited base. Can't believe people actually think its a good investment. I mean my childhood collection had about 7 unlimited charmeleon, worthless.
I still believe that there’s room in this market for increase - but the market did hit a bottom this year and I think a lot of big time collectors are seeing this. I’m semi new to hardcore collecting Pokémon again but even for me I’ve been buying and selling vintage theme decks with no problem. Anywho- thanks for the video. My channel needs to do more talks like this makes for great content and free!
At the beginning of 2020 (Jan./Feb.) Base Set Unlim. boxes were $4k-$5k sealed, sealed packs were $100-$150 and 1st Rocket was $1,500 sealed (which we all thought was nuts). PSA9 Base unlim. Zards were $450-$600 and PSA6 was about $150. The fact that base set unlim. is still $13k-$15k AFTER so many people from creators to rip and shippers opened the boxes (ie made them more rare) is INSANE to me. Population of PSA9 unlimited zards exploded and the card is still up double almost triple from January 2020. The market is so strange. It's like the amount of available product grew but so did the buyers. Very strange new "bottom" we find ourselves at.
Yea it is crazy that the unlimited base set boxes are still in that double digits. You nailed it on the timeline, I bought my sealed base set green wing variant for $4450 during that exact time period. Sold it 8 months later during the Logan Paul hype for just under $33k.
These boxes could be sold for a high price over a long period or the same amount of limited boxes could hit the market with hype as they did for a short period for that same price isn't crazy to me. It's not like we suddenly had another factory print run of base set just more people holding the vintage limited product we're looking to sell during a short span so buy while you can because there will now be less of that product to go around in the future
@@AlexHodgesYT It was 100% an unlimited base box....just the green wing variant only. WOTC stamp on the seal, multiple country codes, and I even did the peak test. The guy I bought it from is a youtuber, he rolled up in a Porsche and in the back was a tub container with 25+ Base Set Boxes. I wanted to pick out the most pristine box.
I invest in sealed. Pokemon and other TCGs. When I buy sealed I buy with the plan to hold for 15 years or more. When all of this craziness took place I sold one item. And it was for 12X what I bought it for. I then had a deal in the wings for an investment that I just simply have way more long term faith in, then the item I sold.
@@josephozturk3288 I only needed $3K to buy the 8 collector's boxes of Modern Horizons 2 that another dealer had. And I didn't have the cash on hand. So I just needed a quick sale.
@@josephozturk3288 I do have stocks and retirement accounts. I'm also paying down my house. So I'm hoping that between owning my house, traditional investments and Collectables I'll have the freedom to enjoy my "golden years" with my wife.
Wow this video hit exactly what I’ve been thinking right on the head. It only makes sense that the market is getting tired of base set. Too many RU-vidrs are opening these boxes by the week and the nostalgia glasses wear off when you see them opened just as often as modern boxes. Honestly the whole leonhart event rubbed me the wrong way because I think a lot of people were trying to cash big and failed. Not to mention the event seemed like it was taking advantage of fans. Happy to see such a genuine person making videos though it’s a rarity these days with sponsorships!
That's going to hurt modern WAY more than it'll hurt vintage, but yeah vintage is going to get ruined as well unfortunately. That PSA backlog is definitely 80+% modern Shining Legends, Evolutions, Hidden Fates, Cosmic Eclipse and promo cards newer than 2016.
The worlds pop keeps growing. I don’t think Pokémon will ever die out and the old vintage Pokémon card pops will only go down. Just hold on to them and the price will rebound.
I hit the end of it, got $300 for my extra cards from when I played in League during the WotC era (I don't grade, this isn't an investment for me) and now just have pretty binders with my collection in them and no extras/doubles to deal with storing. Anyone who collects just to flip or sells just to expect a huge payout is always going to crash. I've been doing toy and card collecting for decades, if you don't do it because you love it - you'll get burned at some point.
I've been buying psa slabs of vintage sets lately now that the bust is happening. Never graded any of my own vintage cards kept them in a binderk like you said they're probably at best psa 7. Family didn't have the means to buy me packs and boxes as a kid now I can go at it and keep them for the next 20 years to see what happens.
Watched my psa 9 holo base set full set go from 600$ to a 16k high and back down. Never wanted to sell once. Guess it was because i got it years ago and was one of the main collection/display goals i had at the time.. Sure it sucks i missed out on an easy flip and rebuy on the low. But at the end of the day i never have to worry about going in the neg when i dp decide to part ways with it. Just a fun life lesson in the end. I did good on a lot of other stuff and prob held too long on others.. The tough part of being a mid 2014/15s collector first vs a flipper now.. Was so hard to let a lot of stuff go not knowing if i would ever get it back again on such a low... (Whoops) ;)
As someone just restarting now, this is how I have decided to approach it - I have been buying new booster boxes and just keeping them sealed and put away, and occasionally I will buy 1 or 2 cards that I am missing from the base set. As time goes on, years from now, I plan to crack some of those boxes on sets that become popular and sell the individual booster packs. All the while I will be buying the modern booster boxes to continue this in the future, and buying more of the cards I want with the profits.
The problem with your plan is you’re 1 of 50,000 plus people doing the same. Over 60 percent of Pokémon collectors are buying modern and keeping sealed. Majority submits to PSA. It’s not going to be like leonhart or pokerev with the vintage packs if that’s what you’re thinking it’s going to be like in 10 years. Bc it won’t. Modern will never be a cash cow except for new sets having their 8 month hype and whoever grades first gets $$$ return. But then those cards go down again. Pop too high and too many people holding onto sealed supply. Reprints at an all time high. It’s silly.
This might've been a slip of the tongue, but we shouldn't conflate the closet collection sellers with flippers. They're very different, even if they likely share characteristics like impulsiveness, impatience, and opportunism. Even so, there's something to be said about them having been here for a while, even if inactively or inadvertently (which is not always the case).
I paid £400 for a psa 9 shadowless pikachu in 2020. Pretty savage but I’ve learned a lot and here in 2022 I still love the hobby and those mistakes I made have made me a much better and more savvy collector.
Dunno man every year another 5 new boxes / sets are added in the end there to many box to buy. I have had expensive cards since 1995. most people want them, most people do not have a cent and waste your time the ones that have money already have it and dont want it or want it but buy around 33-60% and if you use an online venue you will loose 20%+ its not that easy and we did not even talk about tax which is in europe 21% +10% for imports.
Great insight. Honestly, I've been trying to explain everything you say in this video to people since 2020 (and even some since 2016) except probably a little less well spoken. People that don't dig deep enough into the hobby are the ones who think XY Evolutions is scarce (still not!) and never thought to look into the demand /sales data of the singles of the set - not to mention print quality (Zard is like PSA 8 fresh out of the pack 9/10 times). I realize Evolutions has been a good investment thus far, and I don't doubt it will age well (not without another dip or two in the near future) but the set shows perfectly how zoomer crypto-head investor types are dropping $1100 on a box and believing it will 10x in a couple years. It's like people really believe that state of the market ('20-'21). was sustainable. I just wish I had more capital when I re-entered the hobby but don't we all.
My personal biggest wins were Japanese Pokémon center promos like the eevee poncho set and the cosplay boss pikachus. Free hand outs graded the whole set psa 10 sequential and 1 of each is worth double what I paid for the set. Never selling but it’s an investment that was up and held strong
I agree with everything except putting PSA as the only top tier grading company. I'd at least look at beckett too because they grade a bit tougher than PSA
PSA 10s are still fetching pretty solid prices but the lower grades are not. I think people in Pokemon grade wayy too many lower grade stuff and then try and get too much out a premium so the market has become very diluted. I'm finding the most value in raw ungraded cards right now.
I bought a shining charizard back on 2013 for $50, probably a psa 9/10, and sold it raw for $900 during the boom just because I needed some money. I regret it so much. It was my favorite card. I’ve only sold about 5 of my cards since the 90’s. I’ll buy charizard again though one day!
Honestly I don’t mind some graded companies that’s not psa I personally just collect the cards as a collector not a reseller or use them as an investment that said I realise that in 2022 I’m considered an outlier I just want ones I had as a kid protected.
These boxes could be sold for a high price over a long period or the same amount of limited boxes could hit the market with hype as they did for a short period for that same price isn't crazy to me. It's not like we suddenly had another factory print run of base set just more people holding the vintage limited product we're looking to sell during a short hyped span so buy while you can because there will now be less of that product to go around in the future
Just spent so much on these cards and I don’t even care they dropped to be honest I bought them cuz I loved them. Every card I bought I bought knowing these will crash. So I’m not hurt mentally when it happens.
This is true but it really comes down to "I didn't wanna wait for the best price give me it now." vs "Waiting it and getting it 50-75% discount" Was it worth it getting it right away? or wouldn't have made a difference as long as you have it in the end 1-2 years time.
@@deana6072 yes it was lol cuz I have the money to do so and not fall behind. When you have extra saving pennys is not worth the risk to me. I missed out on gold stars, shinings, sealed products cuz I was “waiting for the bottom” but 9/10 items don’t actually go down. Out of the 10k I prolly spent this year I’m not down much. My worst purchase I regret is prolly Lugia 1st edition and on that I only lost 200$ lol while on other hand my gold star mew psa 10 I got at $1200, imagine if I was going to wait for the bottom on that. Lol
@@tcgexchange5675 we are following two different goals. I have the means to spend "THAT" kind of money but the adult in me just can't justify it 🤷♂️ I have my gold stars and crystal cards and 1st eds plus a nicely complete Yu-Gi-Oh/digimon collection and Im not even near $1k. My goal is to finish my collection on either under or exactly on $1k. Adds more of a story within each purchase plus the nostalgia.
The only people who are going to care about WOTC in 20 - 30 years will be our generation because we appreciate our childhood the next generation of kids aren't going to care about Holo base set Zard as much as we did and by that time it'll become a legacy card. Modern has a great chance of being a good buy if you own the right cards if you have darkness ablaze zard probably wont be worth a whole anything but like Mario Pikachu small examples here those will be the cards that will be sought after.
@@typhlosion212 NO because this generation of kids have it easier then we did our store of information was we grew up with it now these kids today can legit watch youtube videos like this one in 10 years if youtube is still around base a thesis around what people were saying. This knowledge of Pokemon investing wasn't around 10 years ago. Comic books aren't the same because the characters are the same but their stories are told by different writers. A new gen of Pokemon are coming out let's say for example Quaxly becomes the next charmander it's going to lift modern pokemon up more then vintage will because of how bad they've been printing gen 1 and 2 pokemon into every single set their will be a fatigue from these Pokemon and the only way the game grows is by new Pokemon becoming popular which hasn't really happened yet. The reason why is because our generation is the one leading the charge on what's hot and what's not. You can't go by what we like it's like the sports market you have to be like "Ja Morant" in 10 years he's going to win 2 - 3 titles and the top 3 Basketball player that's a safe gamble I think and people will start putting more eggs into that basket rather then rely on what's hot right now. The best investments are the ones nobody is seeing right now.
@@typhlosion212 totaly right!👍 Also the new Generation of collectors still need to complete the old Sets;) its a big fail to think they wouldnt be interested in Vintage. Peace ✌️
@@rngesus6472 I wouldn't say that's true as to looking at other collectible card markets like baseball or basketball the first printed vintage cards that started the whole franchise still remain highly collectable. With that logic who would care to buy a honus Wagner baseball card now if a modern person never saw him play...
@@rngesus6472 I disagree. The old Pokémon are always introduced in the anime and video games to kids. You ever notice there is a Pokémon hype every couple of years. These cards have been going up ever since Pokémon go was released. Nintendo is as big as marvel and Dc. Also in the future we will still have some sort of information spread maybe not RU-vid but something else. Also the rare stuff has been holding its value and some stuff has gone up. Modern right now is at a low but wait a couple of years
yup thats what ive been saying a month ago when i saw a few booster boxes sell for certain prices on social media. all these "rare" 1st edition shadowless base set boosters are popping out of nowhere, the past 2 years. I kept hearing that there's less than 20 sealed boxes left in the world. hah rightttttt
not just fundamentals people genuinly just had a lot of free time and extra money during covid. unemployment checks/stimuluses made the market inflated. as well as collections being walked out the closet graded and flipped in mass
Still, for all the WOTC sent in for grading has been hardly any rise in PSA 10 1st edition holo populations. PSA 10 Base Set 1st Edition Holos are all but done (Logans remaining boxes aside), and most others wont rise much most notably Genesis because of the print score lines
Don't know why people get tight when i tell them their alt grading company looks ugly + does not equal the value of the same grade in PSA. guess they'll learn
People get tight as well when you credit new grading services but it makes sense that those who have been in the hobby only investing into their PSA cards wouldn't want to see credit go to other grading services
Yeah i think for a lot of us that have been following this market for many years, we're all pretty surprised by how much vintage sealed is still** out there and hitting the market.
You should add investing consultations as a part of your service. I think there is going to be a lot of demand since there are many “clueless” investors out there
i think this video is an explanation of the past twelve months which i fully agree. calling it here tho that wotc is going up and japanese promos down over the next twelve months. seeing an increasing number of i told you so about japanese going up and wotc not working which i think is a signal in itself
When value submission level opens back up at PSA for say $20, do you think people won't send in tens of thousands more WOTC cards? Or do you think the hundreds of thousands already added to the pop report in the last year will get absorbed by the market so fast that the market will dry up before those cards get back in 2023/2024? Because its going to take a whole hell of a lot of demand for anyone listing WOTC to not be competing with a dozen other sellers also auctioning off into a bearish market because they aren't getting offers anywhere near any current list prices? Sellers are wising up that they can just be patient especially with most anything unlimited or non PSA10. With unlimited WOTC in particular 10s are the only thing that I think optimistically about in terms of retaining value in this market. There is a lot of demand, but lets look at supply of anything outside of 10s. 9s are ok I guess, maybe will hold somewhat steady value. For example; there have been 11,525 base unlimited charizards graded with PSA in the last 52 weeks. Thats with PSA closure, so just counting supply from mostly late 2020 submissions which are going to be finishing up totally soon. Only 11 of those have been graded PSA 10s. In the past a somewhat larger portion certainly would have been graded 10s because PSA had lower standards. But obviously the data is at least showing its highly improbable to own an ungraded 10 at this point. They are under new management so high value 10s seem to be scrutinized a lot more probably to reduce their potential liability for obvious misgrades in the future. And sometimes this liability isn't just monetary, but rather liability of public perception which they are trying to reform. Also needs to be stated as a caveat to this information, that not all WOTC is created equal in terms of rarity. Aquapolis for instance only had 6,010 cards graded from the entire set in the last 52 weeks. Compared to base unlimited which had 112,899 cards graded over the last 52 weeks, or Unlimited Jungle which had 27,139 cards graded. Point being, its best to just look at supply vs demand, and while there is a lot of healthy demand in pokemon, we need to be realistic about how much supply that demand is going to be able to absorb; and make informed decisions. It might be tempting to "buy the dip" on a lot of this stuff, but you never know if you'll end up having to buy the dip of the dip of the dip. separate
Logan Paul artificially pumped the Market and now were correcting to a more reasonable price value. People that bought at the top are bag holders. Its just like stock market.
Because people is dumb enough to buy modern cards for $300, but won’t pay 25$ for a base set holo. I don’t get why would you pay so much for a set that is still in the shelves.
I have to say I'm torn here. I agree about what you said, however guys like Pokerev and deep poket monster, and a lot of others, are opening the WOTC as well. Yes that means there is lots of OPEN product out there. However there is only wobmuch opened product. I mean these RU-vid guys open half a dozen boosters in a stream. Sometimes I feel like all of us resellers are just selling everything to each other. 😆 🤣
I think you need to do a little bit more research from a macro perspective. eBay is forcing every card over 750 to be authenticated by SGC Look into the parent company and capital behind SGC and the relation to Fanatics and you will see the true story.
im glad i never really got into WOTC, to me a lot of the cards are kinda boring. im gonna be on that japanese promo wave forever, theyll always be my favorite
